The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Dorrigo makes his rounds at the cholera camp, where he meets with an orderly named Bonox Baker. They go into the first tent, which contains the sickest men. There are 48 of them, skeletal and rotting. Several are dead. Dorrigo thinks that death is often a relief: “To live was to struggle in terror and pain, but, he told himself, one had to live” (211). He feels that he is a fraud as a doctor in this tent because there is no help he can offer, yet he persists: “He refused to stop trying to help them live. He was not a good doctor; he was not, he believed in his heart, a good man. But he refused to stop trying” (212). By the time they leave, a man named Lenny, alive when they arrived, has died. 

Jimmy Bigelow always plays the bugle at the daily funerals. His bugle “was the only thing that seemed impervious to decay and rot” (215). At the funeral, the pyre makers place Rabbit Hendricks’s body to burn. Dorrigo says that they must also burn Hendricks’s sketchbook, but Bonox argues that Rabbit wanted the drawings to survive, to bear witness. Bonox shows Dorrigo drawings of their torture, and the various tents. Dorrigo argues that the pictures might eventually be used “to justify the magnificence of these monsters” (218). The fire begins to burn.

The funeral services are usually conducted by Lindsay Tuffin, an Anglican pastor, but he is not there when Hendricks’s body begins to burn. Dorrigo performs an improvised service. Jimmy plays a song called “Last Post” on the bugle, although his lips and tongue have begun to swell to the point that it is hard to make a note. The physical pain of playing makes him cry, but he hides it from the men.

Dorrigo is frustrated with himself. What he had wanted to say at the service was: “Fuck God for having made this world, fucked be His name” (222), but instead, he had recited the tedious platitudes of most funerals. As the air fills with the smell of the burning bodies, he realizes he is salivating. When it is time to leave, he notices that the sketchbook fell off the pyre and is unscathed. He opens it and sees a drawing of Darky, just before Yabby perished in the shelling. He decides not to throw the sketchbook in the fire. 

Darky cannot keep up with the men as they move deeper into the jungle. Each time he falls, it is harder to get back up. He realizes he is alone after picking himself up again. He passes out and falls again. When he wakes, he sees Rooster and several other men. They say they are taking a rest day because the Japanese won’t count again until they return. They will fall in with the rest of the men when they return for the march back. Rooster says they have done it once before.

Darky says he can’t stay behind with them. It will be harder on the men ahead if there are too few of them to work. Kessler is the only man who goes with him. Rooster tells the other men that Darky will cover for them: “He’s too weak a sergeant to ever say anything” (228). 

Kota is on his way to the Line for a surprise inspection with the Goanna. They find two prisoners on the trail, one sitting, one lying down. Kota tells the Goanna to put Darky in a kneeling position with his neck exposed: “In some strange way, such killing felt like controlling whatever remained of his own life” (229). He recites a haiku twice and pours water from a canteen over his unsheathed sword. Kota raises the sword, then loses his nerve. It seems as if Darky wants to die.

Kessler tells Darky—who had been blinded by sweat and unable to see Kota—that he is gone, and they are alone again. For the first time, Darky acknowledges that he will die: “He felt the most terrible rage seize him” (232). Then the Goanna comes marching back towards them and commands them to go to the Byoki House, which is their name for the camp hospital. Darky begins crawling towards the camp, and Kessler marches towards the Line. 

A man named Shugs is on his way to the cookhouse when he finds Darky unconscious on the camp’s main walkway. He does not understand how Darky managed to crawl back to camp. He holds him up under a bamboo shower and helps him get clean. Darky tells him about Kota not killing him, and then begins talking about the menu at the fish house. He begins talking senselessly to a woman named Edie, who is not there. 

Dorrigo visits the ulcer hut. The smell of rotten flesh is unbearable. Most of the men are delirious and unaware that he is there. Two orderlies carry in a man named Jack Rainbow. Dorrigo has operated on him twice, two amputations on the same leg. The leg has now rotted again, and Dorrigo knows that his stitches must have sloughed off. He wraps his belt tightly around Rainbow’s thigh and tells the orderlies to take him to the operating theater. As he rinses his hands with water, he feels panic.

He tells a man named Squizzy—who also has medical experience—that Rainbow has gangrene. Squizzy says there is nothing left to amputate, but Dorrigo says they have to try to remove the remainder of the leg all the way up to the hip. 

As Dorrigo begins sawing into leg and Rainbow begins to scream, an orderly runs in to tell them that the Goanna has dragged Darky out of the hospital. They are going to punish him, and “Major Menadue said only [Dorrigo] can stop them” (245). Dorrigo can’t leave Rainbow and says that he will come as soon as he can. When he finishes the surgery, Dorrigo is satisfied: “He knew that what he did was not pointless, without reason; that he had not failed” (247). New beads of blood appear on Rainbow’s stump. The stitches on the femoral artery have burst. In half a minute Rainbow will die of blood loss if untended. Rainbow spasms as they try to work. They cannot hold him still. Dorrigo finally manages to get the artery clamped. He works for several more minutes before realizing that Rainbow is dead, and no one had told him.